Good Sunday Morning! I sat down at my computer this morning and read an email from a friend who asked me, where I was and why there have been no blog entries in nearly a month. I don’t really have a good excuse and I guess for this reason I should apologize to you my faithful reader.
But life has been very full down here in Xenia, Ohio. I’ve been trying to adjust to the life of campus ministry in the United States for the last month and a half. It has been a bit of an adjustment for me. See the nearly two years I spent on STINT in Czech the ministry methodology was strictly relational and now the methodology is still relational but it also has a ton of programmatic flavor to it. It is the programmatic method of ministry that I grew used to in college, as I was heavily involved with Campus Crusade for Christ at UW-Oshkosh, but my methods of ministry had to severely shift as I moved to middle Europe where 90% of the people say, “I’m Czech, I’m an atheist.” In this environment programs just don’t work. No one would come. It more than often is a waste of our precious time.
However, I’m not in Czech right now, I’m in Xenia, Ohio and working on two campuses where programmatic ministry still has a place. So as of late I have been involved in working on a Pizza Eating Contest as Wilmington College and I am the point man on a Boneless Wings Eating Contest at Central State University that will take place on Oct. 11th. Both of these events are great for us as a ministry on these campuses. It gets us in front of athletes that would never come to a weekly meeting or give us a positive response on a comment card they fill out as we speak to their teams. So there are some great reasons for these events, but I’ve struggled in doing a more programmatic approach to ministry. Sometimes, it is hard to see the eternal value of trying to get door prizes or making poster after poster for events. I do prefer ministry overseas where 98% of my time is spent doing life with people and just having a relationship.
This has made me think about the growing cultural shift of America. Over the last few years there has been a lot of talk about postmodernism and this and that. There is a place for this, even though it often feels exhausted, but what I think we need to spend more time talking about is whether or not our country is following our forbearers’ (Europe) footsteps and moving more and more to a post-Christian society. Yes, you could argue that this is part of the postmodernism thing, but as we think about this I see more and more why we need to have our methodology open handed and be willing to throw stuff out that doesn’t work anymore.
This is extremely relevant for those involved in ministry either in para-church ministry (i.e. Athletes in Action, Campus Crusade, Navigators, and etc.) and the ministry of the local church. Because for the last few decades programmatic ministry has been where we are, what we pride ourselves in and so on. But missionaries overseas have seen that in post-Christian societies or non-Christian societies, this doesn’t work so we have to adapt our methods. In Czech this has meant we have tried to make a radical shift to “insider” positions. A perfect example is my role when I was and will be back in Czech. I’m a missionary who happens to coach, play and help with the development of football. As I do these positions and strive for godly excellence in all three I use them as tools to take Jesus into arenas of life that try to push Him out. In essence, our ministry in Czech, and all over Europe, has tried to infiltrate these arenas with Jesus and let Him work from the inside out.
In essence this means just that; we need to continue to move our ministries to an “inside – out” approach instead of an “outside – in” approach. This is the essence of missional ministry and a missional lifestyle. Yes, those of us that are “full-time” paid missionaries and church workers need to wrestle with this, but in reality all of us our to be “full-time” missionaries to the worlds that God has placed us to work from the inside out to see Jesus lifted up and made much of in our worlds.
How are you doing here?
Are you living the life of a missionary to your world?
Are you merely an outside looking in or are you deliberate about how to become an insider that can hunker down a permeate Jesus to you surroundings?
I pray that you will carry on this conversation in your own soul and in your world. May God bless you as you seek to live a revolutionary lifestyle of a missionary to your co-worker, to your neighbor, to your boss, to the barista at Starbucks, to your mailman, to the girl that works at the cash register at the gas station you use, to the other parents at your kids’ little league sporting events, and so on.